I was wonder how did you guys get the FF8 .mch file out from the archive. I went to check all the possible archive in the ff8/data folder using mirex's unmass still no found of .mch file. The closest match to the file was .m00 which do no good. Mirex suggested using biturn 0.86a1 which is not available to download by now.

I totaly have no clue how you guys get the file .mch out.

If you can give a guideline to this whole process it will be apreciated. :D

they have to be somewhere. I remember that there are triplets of the files with same name but different extension which make one archive. I'm not sure now, but try also to look on the game cd's maybe they're stored there.
Do you have the PC version of the game ? I was trying the FF8 models only on PC.

Hi mirex, I've read trou the forums b4. I heard to do some of the ff8 dat model conversion, we need the specific version of biturn which is bi086 alpha1 (Biturn_086alpha1.rar) release version which is not available in your website anymore.

Do you mind to pm me the file links?
Thanks!

Btw, i still cant find anything out about the mch file from the forums links you gave me.
I am currently using the FF8 PC version now, man the graphics support really bad... I am dissapointed the game graphic ended up with gridlike background on my nvidia grforce.

Hi
As far as I know you don't need the specific version 0.86 alpha 1, you can try to use also the newer versions, those should work well too, as seen on the screenshots below. Please look here and download some later release than 0.86 a1 , for example 0.87 ( http://mirex.mypage.sk/index.php?selected=1#Biturn )

As for the model files, you have to search for the files with extension *.FI which are the FF8 data archives. You should be able to find these either in the game directory, or on one of the the game CD's. Open this files in the program Unmass ( http://mirex.mypage.sk/index.php?selected=1#Unmass ) , you should see list of the files contained in the archive. Look for the files .MCH in the archives, extract them from the archive, and view them with Biturn. That should be all that has to be done.

hi
ok so i looked for the .FI file i found some in the ff game directory but no *.mch file inside,i also found an *.FI on each ff8 cds exept the install one but no *.mch inside too :(
perhaps there is any deference between the two version ?
thanks for your answer

edit : i have open the field.fi with unmass and the i have extracted a file call main_chr.fs it was squall !! without the texture....

I can't test it because when I try to download something from www.kvaks.narod.ru it fails in the middle of downloading. Can you upload the files you mention to some other host please ? For example here: http://bin.mypage.sk/

The skeleton was not figured out so far. There is only one fixed skeleton which is build up by Biturn and its the same for all models. It was meant for humanoid models and that's why most of the humanoid models look allright and the rest looks messed up.

You mean that 0.86a1 views them allright ? I would need the files for the analyze then.

Hi Mario. Now I see what's going on ( its a long time since I was working on FF8 models ). There are two kinds of models - Field ones and Battle ones.

Party characters like Squall are Field models. They are mostly decoded and viewable ( still I'm missing the skeleton info so they do not look correctly and they're not animated ).

Monster creatures you are fighting are Battle models, which are only partially decoded. Texture info might be correct and some models remind the real ones, but most of the models still look messed up in Biturn ( when I tried version 0.87b2 ). I don't remember if they ever looked better than that. They are missing skeleton structure aswell, that's why they're so messed up. These models are present in the Viewer which can be found in kvaks.narod.ru.

I could not decode the skeleton information so far, and I don't have free time for it right now, sorry. It would be great if there would be some document on internet describing the skeleton structure.

-- edit --
Biturn keeps freezing / crashing alot when viewing the battle models because it reads the model structure incorrectly. Maybe I could at least fix it so it won't freeze/crash.

I tried to convert it to the 3ds max format and edit it. I actually found out the model are intact. The only thing screwed up in the model was the bones.
For eg, the polygons for the arms of a battle model are intact. But they are screwed becoz the bone are twist against each other.

You mean that this model is FF8 file converted by Biturn ? WOW :-D Can you tell me which file is it ?

Problem is that you cannot decode the model without its skeleton, because each body part's position is relative to it's bone. Without a skeleton it would be a pile of body limbs placed on each other. It wouldn't look nice. I tried to write an mail to Kvaks ( author of the russian FF8 viewer ) if he has some documents describing the models, that would help.

this model is extracted from file c0m132.dat and c0m067.dat. They are same model, just the texture are diffrent.

If u view it in biturn now, you will only seen one piece of crap that looks like spider or watever.

I think kvaks knows the models bones properties. The only problem i seen from his program are all the bones are being mirrored. I think he must be busy on something else, i think he know how to fix that problem.

Btw, I am kinda amature in these programing skills. Currently I only know how to writes program in VB, JAVA. I really wonder what language u use for the model decode and encode and the GUI as well.

Hello Mario!
I tried to extract all these Models, too.
I only managed to export the Field Models to 3D Studio Max. MCH File -> Biturn -> 3D Studio Max.

When i tried to open the .dat files in Biturn it crashed (except of model nr 004 and 132.. bahamut, you wrote here. Bahamut file nr 67 crashes biturn, too.
But when i try to extract the file to 3D Max, Biturn says everythink was done fine, and than 3D Max gives an "Incorrect Filetyp" error.

This is the tricky part. Appearently the format didnt get to written into 3ds max standard.<edited> The only way is to convert into milkshape3d (.ms3d) then covert into 3d studio ascii(.ASC) and finally convert into .3ds format.
The only problem this process made is the texture information lost. Although the polycount and vertext count are preserved.

The only thing u need to do after this is like plays a scrambled up puzzle and repaint on it.

<added>There are another way to preserve the texture while converting into .3ds format. But this havent proven tobe working, so instead of converting into ASC now convert into ASE format. The texture will be preserved. I cant tell this is working but i would be happy to try if there are someone who can supply the ASC import plugin for 3ds max.

Anyway, the problem y the texture had to be stripped off before import into 3ds max via .3ds format. Milkshape3d format were able to read the texture coordinate properly but 3ds max refuses to. It seems the author of 3ds max set the format standard where the texture coordinate must not be negative value. Else it would conside out of bound and crash.
Thanks to kvaks for the ff8model viewer, the picture below explains y the 3dsmax will not import the file.

When i export an WaveFront Object File (*.obj) 3DS and Milkshape crashed.
When i export an LightWave File (*.LWO) the import works, but looks like this: http://www.lucleonhart.de/pics/import.jpgIs this the puzzle you mean?!?! O_O Oh my goodness.

Did you mentioned to get the field models? I can tell you in which files they are hidden. :)

Whats about that viewer of kvaks viewer, can you zoom in?

@ your added posts:
i exported an ASC file, and imported it in milkshape. the result was exactly the same as in 3DS with the LWO file... no textures and a mash! ^^

MS3D is to make the file to be able to convert to a stable ASC format.
(The only problem i had found is when u convert the model into ms3d. It removes the multi-texture. Which means in Milkshape, 1 model only can have 1 texture.) If u want to view the model in Milkshape editor. Just convert it into ms3d.

ASC is where the texture information are being stripped off. So on ASC, the texture information are gone.

3ds is the compatible format for max to import. It supports multi-texture wihtout problem. But it has limited import funtionality where the negative coordinates are cause of "Improper File format".

So u mentioned where to get the mch file. How u do that? Thanks Lucleonhart.

The mch files are here:
Simply download garden by Qhimm (I got a compiled version here: http://www.lucleonhart.de/files/Garden.rar ), press the decompile button (you have to give your "project" a name.. type something). Then Garden will completely decompile ALL files. After it has finished go to the directory where the garden.exe is. There is anew folder "ff8". Go to this subfolder:
%GARDENDIR%\ff8\data\ger\FIELD\model\main_chr\
It is "ger" here, cause i have the german version. In that folder are the mch files! Have fun...

But i still don't know how to get that right puzzle Bahamut, or even a right export function.. Mirex?! ;)

Hi guys. I could fix the problems which cause that one format works and the other one does not ( like the negative tex coordinates and such ). But I don't know how to display models to look properly like http://bin.mypage.sk/FILES/render01-1-ray.jpg

I'll try to fix the issue with negative coordinates next week after I get back from vacation.